Another Google Service Mystery

I wrote recently about how Google Services are often disorganized and non-intuitive.

Here’s the worst example so far: I am on a fellow security professional’s blog—hosted on Blogspot—and I decide to post a comment. So I do the following:

Write my comment

Choose that I want to use my Google ID to post

Pick my appropriate Google account

Sign in to that Google account

And I’m given that image above.

This service is not available for your domain.

What? Commenting? Commenting using my primary Google account is not available? Is this some premium feature I didn’t know about?

No wonder DISQUS is doing so well. You can, well…POST COMMENTS. And you can do it quickly.

Anyway, I go into my Google dashboard and start hunting for this elusive Bush-headed Thrull feature that I must for some-reason-unknown-to-me must enable.

Nothing. No mention of it. It’s not under my services. It’s not under my APIs. Nowhere.

Not that I’d be much happier if it were—that’d be ridiculous.

Takeaway

Google services are among the best in the world. If not THE best. As long as it’s one of the ones that’s a current flagship, that doesn’t change very often, that gets treated like a real service.

For the other 99% (including being able to comment, evidently), you’re lucky to be able to find the URL. And asking for a nice interface? Or having any certainty that it won’t be shut down? Pure fantasy.

I just wish Google could take their brilliance in other areas and translate that properly to running services. Design. Consistency. These things matter.